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With rivals like PayPal Inc. and Square Inc. having made moves recently to enhance their point-of-sale payments offerings, Intuit Inc. on Tuesday confirmed it had bought AisleBuyer LLC, a 3-year-old startup whose technology lets consumers check themselves out of stores with their handsets. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, …
Read More »Groupon Deal for FeeFighters Points up Rewards Brokers’ Need for Acquiring Ties
Groupon Inc.’s acquisition of a Web site that lets processors bid for merchant contracts represents a big opportunity for the online rewards giant but also underscores the dependence of such services on the merchant-acquiring business, a researcher who follows acquiring says. In the deal, announced on Friday, Groupon bought FeeFighters, …
Read More »Studies: Gift Cards Preferred to Higher-Value Gifts, While Many Prepaid Holders Are Banked
As the prepaid card market matures, more data are emerging about surprising consumer behavior regarding prepaid cards or that challenge the conventional wisdom. For example, research commissioned by big processor First Data Corp., a major player in the prepaid space, found that given a choice between taking a gift or …
Read More »Handset Users Indicate Tepid Interest in Mobile Payments As Programs Launch
Experts may well have proclaimed 2012 to be the Year of Mobile Payments, what with digital wallets and other product introductions proliferating seemingly by the day, but at least some researchers are starting to ask a key question: Do consumers really want mobile payments? According to preliminary data, the answer …
Read More »Boku Invades Point of Sale with a Mobile Wallet Aimed at Wireless Carriers
With e-commerce kingpin PayPal Inc. having used mobile technology to move into processing for brick-and-mortar merchants, it was probably only a matter of time before others followed suit. The latest to join the parade is San Francisco-based mobile-payments provider Boku Inc., which on Thursday announced a platform that will let …
Read More »Just in Time for the Holidays—Gift Cards That Require Only 10% Down
With the holiday-shopping season set to kick off on Friday, a startup in San Diego has launched a Web site that lets consumers buy gift cards at 10% of face value. The remaining balance, the company says, comes due only when the cards are redeemed. The site, from Moola …
Read More »Awareness of PCI Remains “Shockingly Low” Among Small Merchants, Study Finds
Small merchants are not much more aware of—let alone compliant with—the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) than they were a year ago, according to a study released this week. Some 53% of small merchants are now at least aware of PCI, a small increase from the 47% a similar …
Read More »Apriva Poised to Offer a Mobile Wallet Aimed at Guarding Acquirers from ‘Outsiders’
The mobile-wallet race, which has attracted a slew of entrants in recent months, is about to get more crowded on fears that established merchant acquirers could be elbowed out of the nascent mobile-payments business. Apriva Inc., a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based provider of wireless technology for payments, will launch in November …
Read More »New Jersey Transit Hops on the Google Wallet Train
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Read More »More Retailers Offer Virtual Gift Cards, But Could Do a Better Job with Them, Report Finds
With the holiday season weeks away, more major retailers are now offering so-called virtual gift cards. But few make the experience of buying, sending, and redeeming the digital payment products easy or pleasant, according to a report issued this week. Some 59 of the 100 largest online merchants, ranked …
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